LMS FOR RETAIL STAFF TRAINING

Your modern LMS is reshaping the way traditional retail staff or employees are trained in ways that were never thought possible before. From simulation-based retail staff training courses to soft-skill training that teach retail employees to be courteous, responsive, and consulting, all while being an expert in their domain, eLearning has indeed opened new avenues of training that traditional training once couldn’t achieve within the retail employees training space.

The retail industry is in the midst of a power struggle. There are two uniquely defined retail formats within the industry contributing to this. Both are important formats of retail, and none can truly out-trump the other. When modern consumers think of retail—the two primary formats of retail that come to mind are—online retail stores and traditional retail stores (brick and mortar). In this article, we are going to take a look at how an LMS is currently reshaping the traditional format of retail.

Let’s start with the contributions of an LMS for retail staff training for traditional retail stores!

LMS FOR RETAIL STAFF TRAINING

Right off-the-bat, anybody who has experience with training the retail industry, and/or has tried their hands at training retail staff, may have faced one of the following issues:

• A high ratio of trained employees exiting to untrained workforce joining.
• Training employees that are hired on an hourly basis.
• Strengthening the workforce for the holiday season.
• Providing sales training to employees with no prior sales training.

Training retail store employees has always been a challenge, but the need to do so has increased exponentially since the advent of online retail stores and its massive popularity amongst modern day consumers. Fung Global Retail and Technology (a consultancy), estimated 10,000 stores in America will shut down in between 2019-20 as a direct result of online shopping.

When looking at the future of traditional retail stores, one has to stop and think­—what is the solution to this crisis? Online stores offer the luxury of shopping from your home along with the ability to choose from thousands of products. Traditional stores can’t offer either. They can’t offer you the luxury of comfort, neither can they exceed their storage capacity. So what is the real advantage of traditional stores?

There are primarily two reasons why traditional stores still operate—products are available for instant purchase and the experience of purchasing a product after testing, trying, comparing, and receiving guidance from an expert.

Even to this day, traditional stores operate because they cater to a set of socio-psychological factors where the ability to interact with people while experiencing a store combine to give the shopper a one-of-a-kind experience.

The only thing that a traditional store has in its defence against the onslaught of online retail is providing top quality retail customer service and experience. There are very few other reasons for customers to otherwise choose traditional retail over the online forma

THE CONTRIBUTION OF AN LMS FOR RETAIL STAFF TRAINING

Retail is facing high attrition rates. It ranges from 45%-70% and adds to the overhead costs of training new employees. Furthermore, the average lifespan of a retail employee with an organization ranges from a week to two months. When you add the costs of training a workforce that has frequent dropouts and additions, it really does not make sense to do it in a traditional manner. The only option that is both economic and viable in the long-run is training retail staff using an LMS.

Retail Dive carried out a research on the retail industry as a whole, they found that only 32% of the retail workforce to be trained. 22% of which were trained using online training on an LMS and the remaining 11% using traditional methods.

When you look at an attrition rate that is ranging from 45%-70% and the percentage of employees trained at 32%, it is quite easy to assess the problems being faced by retail companies.

Some retail companies like Walmart know this, hence, they set about developing 200 employee training centers across America and invested $3 billion in its workforce’s training, a majority of which included investing in online and eLearning strategies and learning management systems. Walmart’s intentions are noble, and they are obviously trying hard to combat the high attrition with quality training, which is also evidently paying off.

In spite of most retail organizations losing out on their net sales, Walmart managed to bag $495 billion in net sales for 2018. This is an increase of $9 billion in net sales from 2017 – Statista.

So evidently, Walmart’s eLearning strategy is paying off, but the battle for Walmart is far from over.

One has to understand that attrition is just the beginning, great customer service/experience is where retail stores differentiate themselves. Also, good customer handling skills come naturally to very few people. The majority of the retail workforce has to be trained in this matter. Customer service is one factor every buyer will consider when justifying the efforts of going to a physical store rather than purchasing online.

HOW DOES AN LMS FOR RETAIL STAFF TRAINING HELP TRADITIONAL RETAIL STORES?

An LMS is highly versatile. It is also a multi-dimensional approach to training which supports all formats of eLearning or online training such as using simulation, visuals, audio, interactivity, and animation to deliver a point. On the other hand, traditional training is two dimensional. It simply relies on a trainer-student relationship, which uses the standard format of lecture and handwritten notes to deliver training.

The reason why an LMS is much better with training in the retail space, more specifically with the customer service part of retail is that it is multi-dimensional. If soft-skills are what your retail employees want, then combine audio with text and media training, upload it on the LMS and deliver a training sessions with impact. If customer service is the training you are looking for, consider a scenario-based approach or a training video that showcases different types of customer interactions that help drive home the point and upload it on the LMS for retail staff training.

Since the retail space has a lot of human interactions involved and usually revolves around customer servicing and customer handling, multi-dimensional formats like eLearning uploaded on an LMS for retail staff training makes much more sense.

Now, try imagining training a group of 50 employees in the art of customer servicing, where elements such as speaking to people in person, convincing them to purchase a service or product, or act as advisors is a primary function, would something as two dimensional as traditional training help? Or would something as multi-dimensional such as eLearning loaded on an LMS for retail staff training?

WHY CHOOSE AN LMS FOR RETAIL STAFF TRAINING

Training Retail Employees Anywhere Anytime

The biggest drawback to training retail employees is the shortage in time to conduct training across all stores and every employee. An LMS for retail staff training is nothing but a repository of training courses that range from onboarding to job role training to customer management training to closing the sales and so on. An LMS for retail staff training is an all-in-one repository that your retail staff from around the globe can access to learn about how they can perform better at work. The best part is that this training is directly served to their computers and smartphones which they can access at their home.

Training a Steady Inflow of Retail Employees

As discussed before, the retail sector is prone to a heavy inflow and outflow of employees on a regular basis. Some retail businesses worry about losing their retail employees the moment they complete the training. This fear of losing completely trained employees stops or deters them from training every new employee that joins their business. However, there’s an even bigger problem than losing your trained retail staff and that is having untrained retail staff operate and engage with your customers. If you had to chose the better alternative, the former is more acceptable. Since traditional training approach is cost-intensive when repeatedly training new employees, the best option is to deliver repeated training to every new retail staff via an LMS for retail staff training. You simply upload a catalogue of important training courses for your employees and they continue to self-train as they join.

Delivering A Rich Training Experience

Coming back to ‘why do people still visit retail stores?’ the answer to this question is a socio-psychological reason which involves the human urge to personally inspect an object and consult an expert all while enjoying the experience of a retail store. When your customers are expecting a rich in-person experience, it’s only obvious that your retail staff need more than just a two-dimensional training format such as traditional training. What your retail staff need is rich training full of images, text, videos, simulations and more which helps your retail staff understand how to prepare the store for customers, how to interact with them, and so much more. All of this can only be possible when training is presented on an LMS for retail staff training.

Access to Product Catalogues

Retail stores repeatedly update product catalogues, features, offerings and more, which makes it very important for your retail staff to understand and keep themselves updated with. An LMS for retail staff works very well in such cases because it also acts like a repository for your retail staff. An updated repository of product information is like an encyclopedia containing the A-Z of your companies products which your retail staff can access whenever needed, even during interacting with customers in order to clarify a customer’s query. An LMS for retail staff training works even better when LSM is mobile friendly, this way, your staff is literally carrying all the resources they need to succeed in their pockets!

Concluding

At Abara, we have spent countless hours consulting and talking to retail companies. Our mission was to find a workaround the issues of retail services, and the problems that the retail space brings, especially with regard to training. Click here m to initiate a free trial of Abara LMS or sign up here and one of our representatives will get in touch with you shortly. You can also view our custom eLearning course services at eNyota Learning!